Saturday Morning, 2:00 AM
by GoesKaboom
Summary: Alan gets an incoherent phone call early in the morning from a very inebriated Sam, who needs his help getting home. On the way, uncomfortable truths are revealed, truths he never thought he would hear from Sam. Oneshot, slash.


**Warnings: Drug usage, language, mature themes **

**Note: Standard disclaimers apply, I own nothing, you know- the usual. **

Saturday Morning, 2:00 AM

All things considered, Alan Bradley should have been _relieved _that Sam called him. Of course the younger man just couldn't go too long without getting involved in something sketchy- it was a miracle the 20-year-old wasn't dead or in jail by now, considering some of the past scrapes he'd gotten into. But that required thinking logically, and at 2:00 AM on a Saturday morning, logic isn't exactly lying around in great quantities. Not even for someone like Alan Bradley.

"Whozat?" the older businessman mumbled into the phone, still half asleep.

"Alan!" Sam's voice came through the line, sounding far away, and very, very inebriated. "I can't drive!"

"You can't drive?" Alan asked, slightly more coherently. "Sam, I know you can drive, I taught you how four years ago, and you drive every day."

"Naw, man, I mean, I like, know _how_ to drive," Sam replied. "But it's a good idea! I mean, it's not a bad idea- no, I mean, it's a bad idea now!" He let out a very un-Sam-like giggle. "I'm drunk!"

"Yes, I can tell," Alan said dryly, sleep haze rapidly clearing. "Where are you? I'll come get you."

"Uh... at the corner of 32nd and Pen... pen... pencil," the young man replied. "Haha, it looks like pencil!" Alan's brow furrowed. The corner of 32nd and Pencil? There weren't any streets called Pencil. Mentally, Alan recited a list of streets that intersected with 32nd. There was Maple, Queen Anne, Prinzet, Arbor Gate, Industry, Bishop, Penstemon... wait- penstemon?

"Do you mean Penstemon?" Alan asked. A loud braying sound came through the phone line, something that Alan belatedly recognized as a laugh, albeit not like any laugh he'd ever heard from Sam before.

"Yeah, Penstemon. It sounds like pencil!" Sam replied. "So... will you come get me?"

"Fine," Alan sighed. "Don't go anywhere, I'll be there as soon as I can." Of course Sam would be as far as away from Alan's house as he could without being out of the city limit itself... on a day with no traffic it took almost half an hour to get from Alan's residence out to 32nd Street, and then it would be another ten to fifteen minutes before 32nd intersected with Penstemon. And that was before the construction nightmare at the new shopping district off 32nd had started. Hopefully since it was so early in the morning there wouldn't be any traffic.

Luckily, there wasn't, and with the construction scene deserted, Alan made record time, pulling up outside the large house at the intersection of the two streets almost half an hour after leaving his own.

As soon as he got out of the gar, Alan could tell that this wasn't a typical teenaged/young adult party. Sure, loud electronic music thumped through the air and the ubiquitous red plastic cups used to hold beer littered the lawn, just like any other party. But there was an acrid, yet familiar smell that permeated the air unsettlingly, and from what Alan could tell, the partygoers seemed to be acting very strangely.

Groups of people lounged around ,staring aimlessly at the most random things. Someone was apparently trying to eat the colored lights decorating the front porch railing, the complaining when he couldn't taste anything, and when he got up to the front door of the house, Alan had to jump back to avoid being smacked in the face by the door. A young woman (who seemed to have forgotten to get dressed, seeing as she was wearing panties and not much else) rocketed out, screaming. "HOLY FUCK THERE ARE BEARS IN THERE ARE THEY'RE TRYING TO EAT ME WITH CHOPSTICKS!" A group of several other people stood at the door, laughing uproariously.

"Emily, come back!" another girl called. "It was just a teddy bear!"

"Um... is she alright?" Alan asked, gesturing towards the girl, who was attempting to climb a tree (probably to get away from the "bears"). One of the boys just laughed.

"Yeah, she always gets like that when she takes X, she'll calm down in a bit- wait, are you a cop?" he answered, abruptly interrupting himself, eyeing Alan suspiciously.

"No, no, I'm just looking for someone. I'm the... designated driver," Alan replied. The group relaxed.

"Who is it?" one of the girls asked. "I can take you to them."

"Sam Flynn," Alan answered. "Do you know where he is?"

"Sure thing, mister!" she chirruped, beckoning Alan to follow her. He obliged, allowing himself to be led through the masses of people packed inside the house. As soon as he was through the door, Alan was able to identify that smell. Weed, and a lot of it. And judging from the erratic behavior of some of the other guests, Alan was pretty sure that there was more than just weed available. The girl led him through clumps of partygoers, opened a door, beckoned for Alan to follow her, and led him down a narrow set of steps to a basement. In it, through the dim light, Alan could make out a sofa and a few chairs clustered around a television set playing Spongebob Squarepants, of all things.

"Sam!" the girl called, stepping around the front of the sofa, squaring her hands on her hips. "There's some guy here to get you." Tentatively, Alan followed, standing next to the girl. He did a double-take, seeing Sam lounging on that sofa without a care in the world, holding a beer in one hand and balancing a bag of potato chips with the other. Twenty years before, Alan had been accustomed to Flynn taking up space in the exact same manner. Sam was the spitting image of his father, right down to the heavy-lidded, dozy expression worn when stoned. The apple _really _didn't fall far from the tree.

"Is that him?" a sleepy-looking guy sitting next to Sam's right asked.

"Yeah, that's him," Sam stated. The girl sitting in the chair to the left let out a harsh, barking laugh that reminded Alan of a hyena.

"Hahahahaha, this grandpa? Really, Sam, the way you were talking I thought he'd be more impressive!"

"Shut up, Melissa," Sam muttered, rising unsteadily to his feet. "Can we go?" Alan raised his eyebrows.

"You were talking about me?" he asked. Sam shrugged.

"Yeah, I guess."

"We also talked about how chickpeas aren't really chicks or peas, so why do we call them?" a lump on the floor that Alan had taken to be a rug or something said.

"I don't get it!" Sam suddenly exclaimed. "They're nei... nay... not- not one of them," he finished lamely, unable to form the words. Alan had to suppress a snort. The resemblance to Flynn really was uncanny. "Then I started thinking about that time I was sick and you brought me chickpea soup. You were so hot then."

Woah. Wait a second. Back the fuck up. Did Sam just say what Alan thought he said? "Excuse me?" the businessman asked.

"When you brought me that soup you looked so hot," Sam shrugged. "For the next week when I was in the shower I jerked off to the idea, and the idea of you curing my cold with your cock." The room exploded in laughed, and Alan, horrified and humiliated, grabbed Sam by the arm and dragged him out the house, ignoring Sam's protests of "Hey, I left my Cheetos!" But as soon as he was safely ensconced in Alan's car, all thoughts of the munchies seemed to fly out of Sam's mind.

"So... now that we're alone, can we fuck? You, me, the back seat of your car..." Sam let his voice trail off suggestively, or at least, in a way he thought was seductive. Alan just stared at him incredulously.

"Sam, you're drunk, high, and I'm old enough to be your father," Alan laughed in disbelief, starting up the engine and flooring the accelerator in his haste to get as far away from that house as possible.

"Not thaaaat much older," Sam drawled. "You see it all the time in porno- the teacher and the student, the boss and employee, the rich guy and the pool boy- it's not so strange. And Hugh Hefner has those girls, and he's like, old enough to be their _grandfather_."

"Sam-" Alan began, but was cut off.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted this!" the young man yelled. "Every night I fuck myself on my fingers pretending it's you! I like to think about what you'd do to me- take me over your lap and spank me for being a bad boy! You'd come in and punish me for getting a bad grade! You'd force me to suck your dick while you called me all kinds of filthy names. Or maybe you'd want a hard fast fuck over the kitchen table, driving yourself into me while I humped the table to get off! Maybe you'd want me to wear your ex-wife's lingerie while you fucked me, calling me your dirty girl! But I know you'd be so careful with me, that's what makes it so hot!"

"Sam, I-"

"Please, do this for me! I'll make it good for you!"

Alan gripped the steering wheel increasingly tighter as Sam's descriptions of his fantasies became increasingly dirtier and more graphic. Alan hardly what knew to do with himself. Here was Sam, who was practically his own son, describing how he wanted Alan to fuck him six ways to Sunday. It was very unnerving. Some of Sam's fantasies were quite... unexpected, and he wasn't shy about how he expressed them, moaning openly, while trying to reach over to grip Alan through his pants.

"Sam, I am _trying_ to drive," the older man said through gritted teeth, feeling disgusting for having inspired these ideas in Sam, no matter how unconsciously he had done it. Sam just grinned at him, however.

"Then pull over!"

"Sam, you're inebriated, and for the last time, no," Alan reiterated for what seemed like the hundredth time. Of course, Sam didn't hear, didn't understand, or just plain didn't care. Alan was going with the last one- Flynn had always had the same single-mindedness when he got high, although it had (thankfully) always been directed towards things like his programming (never mind that most of the time, the code he produced while stoned was useless).

After what seemed like decades, Alan finally pulled into his driveway, something that Sam didn't miss. "Oh! I knew you wanted it too! You brought me back to your place!"

"To _sleep_," Alan emphasized. Sam just waggled his eyebrows. Alan ignored him, unlocking the front door, and making Sam sit on the sofa in the living room. "You. Wait there," he ordered, emphatically putting his hand down on the sofa. Sam heaved a long-suffering sigh, mirroring Alan's own mental state.

Quickly, he went into the kitchen, looking around for a plastic cup he could put some water in. Once he'd secured that, he started rummaging around in the cupboards, trying to find something for Sam to eat. He personally had never partaken- he was too straitlaced for that, even as a young man- but he remembered Kevin Hoovering all of the food he could find, like a possessed vacuum cleaner, every time he got high. Considering how similar Sam's behavior was to his father's, he wouldn't have been surprised if Sam had the same habit. However, as a middle-aged, divorced businessman, Alan very rarely ate at home, usually either going out with coworkers or ordering takeout. Finally, he found a package of pretzels. He took the salty snacks and water into the living room, only to see that Sam was fast asleep on the sofa.

Sighing softly, Alan went to the closet and dug out the old green afghan Lora had knitted early in their marriage, and left behind after the divorce. He covered the younger man with it, before turning to go upstairs to catch up on his lost sleep.

* * *

><p>Sam awoke with a splitting headache, a taste of old socks in his mouth, and fuzzy memories of the previous night. He remembered going to Brian Keberline's party the night before, and most of his high school class, as well as a good chunk of his current classmates at CalTech , had been there. Samantha Delerman had made use of her employee discount at the liquor store to supply the alcohol, and Emily Strong had gotten some Ecstasy tablets from somewhere that she kept unsuccessfully trying to push off to other people. Sam wouldn't have been surprised if she'd ended up taking them herself. He remembered going downstairs to the basement with some friends from high school and college. He remembered watching a bit of television before both Dylan Wiand and Melissa Long had brought out their weed.<p>

They had all shared it, and that's where his memory got fuzzy, a combination of weed and alcohol impairing his recollections. He remembered one of the guys- was it Johnathan Buccheri, maybe- talking about how attracted he was to the calculus professor, a cranky older woman at LEAST in her mid-sixties. Everyone had laughed, and Sam remembered feeling defensive. He was attracted to older people too! Specifically, Alan Bradley, his surrogate father. Oh, the fantasies he had starring that man... Sam couldn't remember if he'd shared any of them or not, but he did remember a lot of laughter and good-natured joking that he couldn't help but think had been directed at him.

Then, he vaguely remembered Louise Something-or-other from his 12th grade English class (and Emily Strong's best friend) coming down to tell him he had visitors or something. And after that? It was nothing but a blur of fuzzy colors, sounds, and sensations.

It was then, with a start, that Sam realized where he was. Oh shit, this wasn't Brian Keberline's basement. This was Alan Bradley's living room. Those were Alan Bradley's pretzels and Alan Bradley's glass of water on Alan Bradley's coffee table. That was Alan Bradley's ex-wife's afghan covering his lower half.

Oh god, This wasn't looking too good for him, Sam thought, being in Alan's house after a night of debauchery, where he may or may not have been a topic of raunchy conversation. How did he end up in Alan's house, anyway? Oh god, he hadn't been arrested and Alan posted his bail, did he?

This was just getting worse and worse. Sam just wanted to get the hell out of this house and get his Ducati. Then he'd go home and _never, ever leave it again._But part of him knew that wouldn't be fair to Alan. He'd shown his ass in a big way and Sam knew that Alan was the one who'd been stuck dealing with it. At the very least, he'd saved Sam from becoming street pizza when he, inevitably, given his state the previous night, crashed the Ducati.

Steeling his nerves, Sam walked into the kitchen, almost hoping that he wouldn't find Alan. Of course, the older businessman was sitting at the table, sipping a mug of coffee and reading the newspaper, the only difference between this Saturday morning and any other work day was the fact that Alan was clad in pajamas, rather than a business suit. Nervously, Sam cleared his throat, and Alan looked up, shooting Sam a look. Not just a look, but one of his patented "what the hell were you thinking?" looks.

"Uh... hi," Sam tried. Alan raised an eyebrow. "Th-thanks for coming to get me."

"Of course," Alan said dryly. "When you called me, you were so out of it that I was surprised you managed to remember my phone number." Sam winced- not only because of how far gone he must have been, but the fact that he had been the one to call Alan. He had thought that if he hadn't been called by some authority, one of his friends had been the one to dial the older man.

"I called you?" was all he could think to say. Sam didn't think that the older man's eyebrows would go any higher at all, but he was wrong.

"You really don't remember anything, do you?"

"Not much after I got high," Sam admitted. Alan sighed.

"So you don't remember calling me a 'silver fox' and telling me you wanted me to fuck you so hard that you couldn't sit down for a week? Then you said something about me forcing you to suck my dick, and then there was something about woman's lingerie and me calling you a 'dirty girl?'" Sam winced again, and would have said something, but Alan wasn't done. "Then there was that whole thing about me fucking you so hard over the table that you'd come without having to touch yourself." Those were all fantasies that he'd had, but Sam had _never_ expected Alan to ever find out about them, much less have them parroted back in all their filthy, explicit glory, by the very subject of said fantasies.

"Alan, I can explain-"

"How do you intend to explain this?" Alan replied calmly, not giving away his emotions. "That you were drunk and stoned and that you didn't know what you were saying? I'm old, Sam, but I'm not an idiot. Your father sometimes got just as wasted, and he was never more honest with me than he was then." Sam looked so shocked, horrified, betrayed, and _jealous_ that Alan felt the need to explain more, although secretly he felt that he shouldn't have to. "It wasn't what you're thinking. He would always tell me _exactly_ what he thought of our coworkers, my ideas, and the company's plans."

It was foolish, he knew, but Sam felt better to know that his father and Alan hadn't had that kind of relationship. Maybe it meant he had a chance? It must have been quite obvious what he was thinking, because Alan then continued: "No, your father and I never... well, anyway. And no, I do not wish to have that kind of relationship with you, either. My god, Sam! You're like my son!"

"But I'm _not_ your son!" Sam exclaimed, knowing where this was headed.

"You might as well be," Alan replied coolly. "I'm sorry, Sam, but I just can't see you in that way." Alan shuddered. Even just talking about hypotheticals felt... incestuous, somehow.

Sam nodded, a lump forming in his throat. He wasn't sure how he'd expected this conversation to go, but a part of him had held out hope that Alan would understand and want him too. At the very least, he'd expected to be lectured about his drug usage and alcohol consumption. That was the parental-figure lecture that would have made more sense. Alan exhaled slowly, recognizing the conflicting emotions currently making themselves known on Sam's face.

"I understand, Sam, I really do. I was your age once too, and there were people I cared for very much. People that I cared for that... didn't feel the same. I know how it feels. But you're my best friend's son!"

"My father is dead," Sam said dully. "And if he's not, then he's off somewhere doing whatever. Why should that matter now?"

Alan tried to hide how much those words hurt him. He believed Flynn was still alive, somewhere, and that he hadn't abandoned his family, and his work. But hearing the finality in Sam's voice drove home the point that the rest of the world thought the same thing. "You've been my son since you were seven years old!" he continued. "I always saw you as my son, and I never would have thought... never would have expected-"

"I get it," Sam said quickly. "This must have been... a shock." Alan snorted, the barest shades of a grin teasing the corners of his mouth upwards.

"That's an understatement. But you know I would have picked you up from that party, even if I'd know about... this at the time," he said. Sam looked confused.

"What are you talking about?"

"The drugs, Sam. And the alcohol," Alan replied, tone turning deadly serious. "Sam, if you had tried to go home on your own, you would have gotten seriously hurt. When I got there, you could barely tell up from down! And even if you'd somehow managed to avoid hurting yourself, you could have gotten arrested! You're not 21 for another two months, Sam." Sam looked like he was about to offer a rebuttal, but Alan didn't let him. "And I don't care if you'd be able to get away with it for the alcohol, being so close in age. Marijuana is illegal for everyone, and no, you do not have a medical reason to use it, and I doubt the police would believe it if you tried that excuse." Sam didn't have a rebuttal to that.

"I'm sorry," he said, after a lengthy pause. "I'm sorry, for everything." Alan sighed, clapping a hand on Sam's shoulder.

"So am I," he stated.

"Let's just forget this ever happened," Sam said quickly. "I won't smoke weed, and I'll wait to drink again. And we'll never mention this again, alright?"

Even though he said it, however, both he and Alan knew that neither one of them would forget what had been said that past night. Well, at least Sam wouldn't forget it again. It would be one of those things, the family truths that hung around like a miasma of awkwardness, tainting every interaction from here on out. Both Alan and Sam had no delusions about that.

But they could at least try to take one step forward at a time.

/END


End file.
